I cover science and public policy, environmental sustainability, media ideology, NGO advocacy and corporate responsibility. I'm executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project (www.GeneticLiteracyProject.org), an independent NGO, and Senior Fellow at the World Food Center's Institute for Food and Agricultural Literacy at the University of California-Davis. I've edited/authored seven books on genetics, chemicals, risk assessment and sustainability, and my favorite, on why I never graduated from college football player (place kicker) to pro athlete: "Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk About It". Previously, I was a producer and executive for 20 yeas at ABC News and NBC News. Motto: Follow the facts, not the ideology. Play hard. Love dogs.

From 50% to 80% of Americans, depending on the poll and how one interprets the data, do not believe in evolution. Yet natural selection theory has been settled science for more than a century. Even the Catholic Church agrees that evolution doesn’t have to conflict with church dogma. So, what gives?

The explanation, according to Mooney is simple: conservatives are scientifically illiterate. Mooney bases his conclusions primarily on two issues: anthropogenic global warming and evolution. The heat generated by Republican grey matter working through complex scientific theories pops their hard-wired neural circuits like corn heating in a kettle. Because science is made up of “facts,” he writes, there must be some neuro-cognitive evolutionary reason for why the right wing brain limps along as it does. He equates the far right of the Republican base, which does fervently embrace these anti-science views, with both Republicans and conservatives in general.

It’s a neat theory: Republicans are congenitally defective. Well, he doesn’t use the word “defective”. He does say he believes they are cognitively incapable of accepting such staggeringly complex concepts as “survival of the fittest.” But he’s got a big heart. I’m not making value judgements, he’s quick to claim. I’m just reporting facts. We should try to understand these mental slackers not blame them.

Just-so science

Mooney’s narrative reminds me of the fanciful Rudyard Kipling tale about how the leopard got its spots. They came about courtesy of the leopard’s friend, an Ethiopian, who painted it with black paint left over from darkening his own skin. Kipling’s wonderful turn-of-the-20th century “Just So Stories” contain fictional tales that pretend to explain scientific phenomenon. No one takes them seriously. The trouble with Mooney’s “just so” story about the biology of politics is that some people—mostly Democratic ideologues—do believe it.

Trendy science journalism has long been hampered by a style of argument that identifies patterns of behavior and then tries to construct adaptive explanations for why this group thinks that way or why that group votes this way. These speculations have been charitably called “science.” They should be more contemptuously labeled “just-so stories” as they rely on the fallacious assumption that every behavior exists for a biologically deterministic reason.

Let’s return to our Jeopardy contest, which highlights a classic just so story. What’s the correct answer? There is a clear Republican-Democrat split over the validity of evolutionary theory, although neither party’s adherents win awards as a group for scientific literacy. In the latest poll on this subject, by Fox News, in September 2011, the pollsters asked: Which do you think is more likely to actually be the explanation for the origin of human life on Earth, the biblical account or Darwin’s theory of evolution or both accounts (which is logically impossible, but humans are not always logical).

The results are frightening. Only 28% of Democrats and 13% of Republicans accept the purely scientific explanation. So, are both Democrat and Republican brains defective? To make his case, Mooney flips the issue upside down, lumping together as evolution supporters those who subscribe to the science and those who believe that God guided evolution (the “both” category). Using this metric, 52% of Democrats and 41% of Republicans subscribe wholly or in part to evolutionary theory. That’s a real but hardly earth shaking difference.

These patterns have persisted for decades, and scientific literacy on this issue may even be backsliding. In 2005, an NBC poll found that 33% of Americans subscribed to strict evolutionary theory; 57% believed in either the fundamentalist Biblical version of human origins, which holds that the earth was created in six days and a crafty snake talked poor Eve into sinning, or a divine presence.

Polling on hot-button science issues almost never breaks down the data by racial groups. But a friend of mine, who is an internationally respected geneticist and dean of research at the Joint School of Nano-science and Nano-engineering at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and North Carolina A&T University, was curious. Joe Graves,, who is black, asked pollsters Peter Hart and Bill McInturff for the response percentages among African Americans. Graves was saddened by what he was told. Only 16% of blacks believed in evolution; 80% accept a Biblical account at least in part; and most disturbing, he says, 60% take the Bible, as scientific gospel.

How do the views of blacks compare to tea partiers? They didn’t exist in 2005, but we do have recent polling data. The Fox survey, in line with others, found that 66% accept the Biblical account in whole or in part and 55% believe in the literal truth of the Bible.

The problem with just so theories is that, like Eve’s serpent, they come back to bite. Mooney has trapped himself into arguing that both tea partiers and African Americans have defective brains, with black “Democratic” brains being more so.

Why do blacks as a group reject evolution more than any other demographic in America, including conservatives? As Graves notes, the majority of American blacks belong to fundamentalist Protestant denominations, such as the National Baptist Convention, which claims that every aspect of the Bible is true. Graves believes the best explanation for anti-science thinking is not the Republican/Democrat divide but the religious and educational schisms in America. Tea partiers and African Americans, as groups, share certain characteristics. Their educational levels are low and their religious fervor is high. Several studies have demonstrated a negative relationship between student religiosity and likelihood to take science classes or pursue a science career. Turns out that if you factor in education and strength of religious belief, the Democrat-Republican divide dissolves almost entirely.

Liberal precautionary politics

As other critics of Mooney’s speculations have pointed out, by subject matter, the left anti-science kook index is remarkably high. It includes “natural” remedies and alternative medicine, the special nutritional benefits of organics, the inherent threat of genetically modified crops, cell phones as carcinogens, the link between vaccines and autism, the toxicity of tested and approved chemicals, the intrinsic dangers of fracking and nuclear power, etc. etc.

Mooney goes apoplectic at any suggestion of equivalency. He contends that conservative denialism is more consequential than the liberal version. He excuses it as the product of really good intentions gone bad or mainstream liberal belief in the “do not harm” dogma of the “precautionary principle,” which he praises as sound science. Few scientists would agree.

In 1992 delegates at the United Nation’s Rio Earth Summit approved a statement declaring: “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.” (emphasis added)

Led by the liberal “The Science and Environmental Health Network” and with the strong support of such mainstream leftist groups as the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Environmental Working Group, Greenpeace and the like, activists junked the UN statement and adopted the far more radical: “When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.” (emphasis added)

The switch from a standard based on “irreversible danger” to one grounded in “harm” rankles scientists. In its crudest application liberals invoke the precautionary principle as a means of deciding whether to allow corporate activity and technological innovation that merely might have undesirable side effects on health or the environment. In practice, the principle is strongly biased against the process of trial-and-error so vital to progress and the continued survival and well being of humanity.

I couldn’t find any polls of scientists on this issue, but most international scientific bodies, including regulators in precautionary Europe, reject the hard-left version of the precautionary principle endorsed by Mooney. An informal survey of 40 top scientists by the British free thinking group Spiked found almost no one who supports the mainstream liberal view. Writes Spiked:

“Imagine medicine without vaccines, penicillin, antibiotics, aspirin, X-rays, heart surgery, or the contraceptive Pill. Imagine scientific theory without Newton, Galileo, quantum mechanics, or the human genome project. Imagine transport without airplanes, railways, cars or bicycles; power without gas, electricity, or nuclear energy; agriculture without pesticides, hybrid crops or the plow. Imagine man had never been to the moon. This is how scientists imagine history, had past developments been subject to the constraints of the ‘precautionary principle—the assumption that experimentation should only proceed where there is a guarantee that the outcome will not be harmful.”

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I actually don’t disagree with some of your key contentions. The Republican leadership has adopted these views. That said, that’s not what Mooney contends. If his analysis reflected what you wrote, there would be no beef. His failure is they he realizes on his own brand of fantastical pseudo-science to make the socio-political argument that you have articulated we. Simply said, Mooney’s book sucks.

The conservative brief against legislation with the aim of reducing the effects of “global warming” is much more complex than either you or Mr. Mooney admit. That is to say that before legislation would be enacted that would be deleterious to the economy, conservatives believe that the following must all be demonstrated: a) that the data underlying the theory is accurate and correctly sampled; and b) that the predictions based upon this data and the theory have been proven to have occurred; and c) that no other natural phenomena outside the control of humans are a significant factor causing the “global warming;” and d) that the harms predicted as a result of global warming would be a net negative and would not be balanced with or overcome by positive effects of “global warming;” and e) that measures proposed to mitigate “global warming” are within the power and control of humans (viz, that they are scientifically efficacious); f) that the particular measures proposed would be within the power of the cooperatig governmets (viz, that the “solution” is politically possible, meaning that the measures would not be offset by the activities of other actors outside the political control of the governmental body); and g) that, if adopted, the measures would not cause corresponding economic deleterious effects that, on balance, outweigh the positive effects of the measures.

It should also not fail to escape notice that the same solutions proposed to combat “global warming” – essentially reversing the industrial revolution – were proposed to combat the last “scientific” hysteria pushed by the left, the “population bomb,” together with other items on the long-standing leftist wish list: interational governmet, re-distribution of wealth and assets to the third world, the diminishmet of the economic power of the United States, and forcing people (Americans) out of their cars and suburban lifestyles and into dense urban environments.

Conservatives aren’t so much “anti-science” as in need of a comprehensive and persuasive argument that meets each of the above elements and is dispositive of the issue, but this is wanting.

On the other hand, leftists promote the idea that “global warming” is the cause of nearly everything negative in the natural world – for example, earthquakes. Have you seen “The Day After Tomorrow?” What is this if not the definition of anti-scientific hysteria?

You wrote:”On the other hand, leftists promote the idea that “global warming” is the cause of nearly everything negative in the natural world – for example, earthquakes.”

I would note that the history of the theory of global climatic change is much older than you suppose and was advanced by the most important scientists in history.

The “Hot House Theory” of global warming (as it was first known) was advanced by Joseph Fourier, the French physicist and mathematician in 1824 in a paper called “Remarques générales sur les Temperatures du globe terrestre et des espaces planétaires” (Annales de Chimie et de Physique, pp. 136-167, Tome XXVII, Octobre 1824. Paris: Crochard). Here he argued the the moon showed radical changes in temperature between day and night while the earth showed much less change. He showed that the atmosphere acts like a blanket to trap heat, preventing the extremes of temperatures seen on the moon.

This theory made a substantial advancement in 1859 when John Tyndall, a remarkable physicist, mountaineer, and pioneering glaciologist, wrote a paper called “On the Absorption and Radiation of Heat by Gases and Vapours, and on the Physical Connexion of Radiation, Absorption and Conduction” (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, pp. 1-36, Vol. 151, Part I, 1861. The Bakerian Lecture. London: Taylor and Francis) wherein he wrote:”The solar heat possesses… the power of crossing an atmosphere; but, when the heat is absorbed by the planet, it is so changed in quality that the rays emanating from the planet cannot get with the same freedom back into space. Thus, the atmosphere admits of the entrance of the solar heat, but checks its exit; and the result is a tendency to accumulate heat at the surface of the planet.” He showed that carbon dioxide and water vapors were the main agents trapping heat on a qualitative level.

In 1896 Dr. Svente Arrhenius, one of the most important scientists in history, published a paper called ”On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground” (Philosophical Magazine 41, 237-276 – you can read the entire paper here

http://www.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf

It demonstrates quite conclusively the causation connection between in a quantitative fashion. Dr. Arrhenius shows that for each two fold increase in carbon dioxide, the average temperature of the earth’s surface will increase a few degrees. Since then, the concentration of carbon dioxide has in fact increased and the mean temperature of the surface of the earth has increased in pretty much the way Dr. Arrhenius said it would.

In 1906 Pr. Arrhenius wrote a book “Världarnas utveckling” (which was translated into English as “Worlds in the Making (1908)). There he wrote:””If the quantity of carbonic acid in the air should sink to one-half its present percentage, the temperature would fall by about 4°; a diminution to one-quarter would reduce the temperature by 8°. On the other hand, any doubling of the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air would raise the temperature of the earth’s surface by 4°; and if the carbon dioxide were increased fourfold, the temperature would rise by 8°.” (p53)

“The enormous combustion of coal by our industrial establishments suffices to increase the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air to a perceptible degree.” (p61)

Thus was born the theory of Anthropogenic Climatic Change (ACC), before Al Gore’s father was even born and none of it was funded by any government official or “leftist” anywhere. The basic science is settled, all of the issues that you raise do not bring into question the almost 200 years of climatic and atmospheric science on which the ACC theory is based.

That’s all well and good, but I think what we are talking about is the political movement proffering solutions or proposing mitigating measures to “global warming,” and specifically the data supporting (or not supporting) the dire warnings that are made about global warming – i.e., that earthquakes are caused by it. I understand that these hysterical warnings are often not made by the scientists themselves – but the are made by leftists and Democrats, which is the matter at issue.

That the theory was later championed by the left does not mean that it is not being used as a pretext to impose “solutions” which are responsive to and motivated by other ideological pursuits of the Left.

It is interesting that you cite scientists over a century and a half ago and their findings of warming, when of course the internal combustion engine had not been distributed in any significant way and when the earth’s population was one sixth of what it is today. If global warming was a measurable problem in the 1850s, what sort of de-industrialization of the earth would be required to mitigate these effects to your satisfaction?

And lastly, for what other field of scientific inquiry is the “science settled” in the same manner that it is for “global warming?”

This is perhaps the most misunderstood facet of the science, especially among climate alarmists. The 19th century physical chemists had it a little wrong, and everyone, including the IPCC, agrees that a doubling of CO2 by itself produces just a little over a degree C of warming. The general circulation (climate) model scenarios are all coded up with an assumption that any warming (not just CO2 driven) will increase evaporation (yes), leaving more water vapor (the dominant greenhouse gas) in the atmosphere (yes) but not more clouds (say what?!).

This is where runaway global warming and tipping points come from. Systems dominated by positive feedbacks tend towards instability, like a public adress system squealing horribly when there’s too much amplification and too much treble. Climate sensitivity to CO2, when these positive feedbacks are taken into account, ranges from 2 to 5 to even more degrees for a doubling of CO2.

Berkeley’s Richard Muller (emeritus Physics), a believer in AGW, has nonetheless stated that if there’s just 2% more clouds than the models predict, all of AGW goes out the window. Won’t happen. More low clouds reflect more sunlight.

Where the wicket gets sticky is that there are real scientists with real academic credentials with real (yes, peer reviewed) journal articles that have found the opposite: rather than positive feedbacks, the CO2 sensitivity is even lower than the unity gain of just the CO2 forcing… rather than 2 to 5 degrees C for a doubling, it’s more like a half degree, or variable, with a half degree at the equator to a degree at the poles. Negative feedbacks are a feature of stable systems, and the climate has been remarkably stable over the past 500 million years visible life has been on the planet.

As mammals, we evolved in the Triassic (roughly 250 million years ago) in about a 2000ppm CO2 atmosphere, and there was one snowball Earth episode closer to 500 million years ago where the entire planet was virtually frozen over, with CO2 being several times the levels of the Triassic. Our current ~400ppm (0.04%) just isn”t a danger nor is any CO2 level we might reach before we stop using fossil fuels because it’s become cheaper to use a different energy source to stay warm and produce food or for Al Gore to travel in luxury.

There are risks involved with fossil fuel extractions and use, but CO2 production and catastrophic anthropogenic global warming doesn’t appear to be one of them.

Political affiliation has nothing to do with scientific literacy. By the way, the term stupid means lack of capacity not ignorance of the facts.

In the Climate Science debate:

Affirmers are individuals who blindly follow the IPCC conclusions without reading the reports and researching the science. By and large, these individuals vote Democrat.

Deniers are individuals who blindly reject the IPCC conclusions without reading the reports and researching the science. By and large, these individuals do not vote Democrat.

Skeptics account for nearly everyone left. Science is organized Skepticism. Skeptics are individuals who have read the IPCC reports and have researched issues related to the science and the IPCC conclusions.

Discard the opinions of the Affirmers and Deniers and you’ll find the issue central to the debate. Namely, the IPCC Feedback multiplier is not based on proven science. Without the multiplier, there isn’t a need for the UNs Rush to Judgement and there isn’t the need for the expendature of Trillions of tax dollars.

The lack of US due-diligence related to alternative energy solutions and the glaringly Not-So-Smart programs is criminal at best. There is time to develop proper solutions and the free market is the best way to achieve them.

I see your claim that you’ve read the book. I’m not buying it. In your review you ignore the actual “hard science” part of Mooney’s reporting, which is done in correlating conservative attitudes with fMRI’s. The polling just serves to point out that Republicans dominate when it comes to scientific ignorance. The fMRI’s tell us why.

This article is one of the more depressing things I have read in a while.

We understand that as a liberal, you think it is your duty to push your Atheist, Left-Wing views on the people, attempting to sway those who don’t know as much about politics by personally generalizing and insulting each member of the Republican Party. And God (YES, GOD) forbid that someone controlling a form of media such as Web News, TV, Magazines, and so on (other than Rush Limbaugh, who we hope to discount, considering he is an embarrassment) have a Conservative view. Wonder why? We have better things to do. The fact that you specifically title the essay “Republicans are Stupid…” shows that you are not only biased but blind to the fact that political party does not relate to intelligence. I’m a Christian Conservative, 15 years old, with a 2000 SAT and a 140 IQ. I live in a blue state, though, so is everybody smarter than I am? Let’s just discount generalization for now and say no. Who are you hoping to reach when you assume that all Christians and their accounts of creation are frighteningly wrong? Fellow atheists, of course. Such bias, and from a big name like Forbes, too. We believe in a God. He and His word are much more important to us than the pretentious, snotty quibbling of a group of biased writers who write to a similar audience in the hopes that someone agrees with them. As for the Democratic party, it is nothing but lazy, Godless, socialist, maggot-infested, pot-smoking hipsters, who torch the concept of personal accountability and want the terrorists to win. Want generalizations? There, you have them. Since you’ve decided to attack Christians, I thought I could string together some common misconceptions for you (Despite the fact that some of these are irrelevant, now you are one more person who might know the truth): –We don’t hate gays. Christianity is against SIN, and we think the lifestyle is wrong, but our BIBLE doesn’t tell us to hate any person, or to perform any sort of hate crime or expression. “Love thy neighbor and thine enemy.” –Many Christians will take belief to different levels; many DO believe in evolution and natural selection, and also God. Though personally, I believe in the divine truth of the Bible, some people are open to your beliefs as well. –Christians and Republicans aren’t stupid. I’ll say it again: Pushing your belief that someone who believes in God or small government is somehow automatically less intelligent than an atheist liberal is downright pathetic.Who are you trying to persuade, anyway? You have a responsibility, Mr. Entine, as a man who can reach millions of people, not to fill their heads with crap, bluntly put. Anything this biased shouldn’t reach the public because the world will be a more biased place, hostile to Republicans and Christians, people just like any other, who are valuable to society and deserve respect, even if it is grudging respect. It’s time to accept the fact that Christians are who they are and RESPECT IT. So THINK, Mr. Entine, before you call a group of people ‘deficient.’ THINK before you platform to your narrow-minded cronies. Think for the sake of character, and for this country. Thank you for your consideration,

I can see why the fox poll only got 28% democratic in for evolution. Because the question is wrong. ”

“ Which do you think is more likely to actually be the explanation for the origin of human life on Earth, the biblical account or Darwin’s theory of evolution ”

The problem with this is that Evolution explains the diversity of life, not the origin of it. That is abiogenesis. But we don’t exactly have a theory for the origin of life, because we don’t know how it came to be. Conservatives cite this as proof of science being wrong and Christianity being correct.

Errr.. No… Absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. Of course this too could work in the conservatives side as well. Because there is no evidence for God, then it doesn’t necessarily mean God does not exist. But here’s where the real problem comes into play. Why many Scientists DO take a lack of evidence as implication of non-existence.

It’s because God is supernatural. Which by definition cannot be explained. When you get “ God” in the playing field of the Scientific Method, it cannot follow through because it is not Science simply by it being supernatural, it is essentially philosophy, or a myth. So when you get to this realm, the fact that there is no evidence for or against it, can be deduced to a simple logical explanation. First off, if God is permanently safe from clutches of facts, I too can say I have a supernatural God called Shevr. Shevr cannot be seen and cannot be touched is only a spirit. Shevr also has a thousand siblings exactly the same way. Shevr also has parents and grand parents that are exactly the same way. I have just created more than a thousand Gods that are permanently safe from being disproven or proven. Which is the same argument for Christianity, that “I know it exists therefore it exists.” And although they can say, “I know your God doesn’t exists because I know mine is the only one,” is invalid as it is equally invalid to my arguments, and at the same time valid. This is where you run in circles and you get paradoxes, because any argument we makes is valid but invalid at the same time. This is logical laziness in the sense that neither of us can be deduced to be correct nor incorrect and therefore is utterly meaningless.

Conservatives do not realize the game which they play, but it is a strange one. The problem here is frame-of-reference. There is no basis on which to justify what is a valid and invalid argument because they both are free from accountability. In a sense, you can call it all a simple hypothetical delusion. In that they created a God for fun, along the lines, forgot that they themselves created it, and are now stuck in circles believing it.

Unlike these philosophical arguments, Science DOES have a basis for identifying what is valid and what is not. It is facts. And this is why it is so good and conjuring results. Because it uses the methods that work best, and whenever there is a new method, if it is better than the old one, it will replace it. It doesn’t matter if you “liked the old method,” it’s not subjective, if it is better it will become the norm. Conservatives are xenophobic and always talk about how, “easy it was to live back in the days,” because they simply do not take into account the vast differences, be it cars, food, transportation, Google Maps, or whatever. They don’t stop to think life is better now than it was 50 years ago because of our technological advances that Science has given us.

I am a huge advocate of Secularism, Separation of Church & State, and teaching Science in schools. If Conservatives want Christianity taught in schools, it will be taught in world history classes–just as I myself had learned in middle school–along with many other religions. Christianity and ID will not be taught in Science classes because it is not Science by definition, it is the supernatural. But if they do want to present a case, they can go ahead and try, but they will not find anything.

1. They expect us to teach it while their supposed “evidence” is “in progress,” and 2. Pretty much all the evidence that had been presented at one point for God has either been refuted and shown to have zero predictive capability, or have been refuted as non-evidence. That’s it, that’s the end of it.

The problem with this whole issue, is that Science is Falsifiable, but it is MISUNDERSTOOD. Indeed, if you present something better than Evolution, that has overwhelming amount of evidence, and withstands the scrutiny of the world’s greatest minds, it will become the new, and Darwin’s current theory will be discarded. However conservatives and ID Proponents take this the completely wrong way. Just because you come into the arena and say, “God exists and I know it,” doesn’t mean we have to accept it because the theory is falsifiable, and it doesn’t mean that what you have presented is a legitimate case, it’s not even a case at all. It is a subjective statement. Which Science is not, Science is objective.

As I have always said, Science is strict, but gentle, biased, but fair, and truth, but false. And don’t quote me on that because it is metaphorical, semi-poetic, not to be taken literally.

If you Conservatives want Genesis to be taught alongside Science, provide proper evidence of it, or bug the crap out of your God to come forth and show Himself.